


magic is a force

by wearethewitches



Series: author's favourites [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Magic, Pre-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, The Force, Trans Character, vaguewriting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-17 08:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13073250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearethewitches/pseuds/wearethewitches
Summary: If one needs a teacher and the Room of Requirement hears, who does it choose?Or, Lizzie Evans asks for help and is given a door to Dagobah.





	1. Chapter 1

On the train to Hogwarts, Lizzie finds a compartment – she finds a compartment that she gets kicked out of because _we’re seventh years, firstie and you don’t get one to yourself, now get._ Lizzie tries to search out another compartment, but by now – eleven oh five, the train already out of the station and no-one waving anymore – everyone is settled somewhere.

Actually, there are a few stragglers, but they’re older or late meeting with their friends. There’s one other first year searching for some place to sit.

“Hey,” he greets glumly, shaggy copper fringe hanging over his eyes. Lizzie waves shyly, Hedwig on her shoulder hooting softly. “You’ve got your own owl?” he questions, sounding jealous as he huffs, pushing past her. Lizzie stumbles slightly, hurrying to save her trunk from being pushed over by the unhappy boy.

Lizzie grew up in Little Whinging, where Dudley and his friends would play _Lizzie Hunting_ and would rip her dresses just to snicker while Aunt Petunia shouted at her. She’s used to not having friends and for other children treating her horribly.

 _I thought I could start new here,_ she thinks on the Hogwarts Express. _Apparently not._

* * *

After primary school, usually, rather than walk home and risk the bullying attitude of her cousin, Lizzie would escape to the library. However, no matter how much she read about camping, she still couldn’t create a small fire for herself in the garden shed when Uncle Vernon locked her in on purpose overnight.

With magic, it’s the same. Lizzie gets her classwork done, hiding from her classmates who wonder where _Harry Potter_ is and studies all sorts of magic. Transfiguration is the type she likes best, she thinks, but transfiguration is _hard_.

Professor McGonagall refuses to teach Lizzie how to transfigure herself. _You are a beginner, Miss Evans. When you’re older, perhaps._ When she asks _her_ to do it, instead, Professor McGonagall shakes her head and offers her a biscuit, picking out a book for her to read from her personal bookcase on the Ministry of Magic’s regulations on transfiguration magic. Later, she sends her another in the post, wrapped in brown paper with a note saying, _open in private._

Lizzie is eleven. It’s going to be another _six years_ before she’s old enough for Professor McGonagall to legally transfigure her into a _proper_ girl from a boy. She has to stop growing first _and_ to become a proper girl, Lizzie would have to take potions first to make the transfigurations permanent, potions she can’t brew or consume until she’s an adult.

Madam Pomfrey only confirms what the second book says, but offers to teach her some small magic tricks that she wouldn’t have grown up with in the muggle world, offers to _support_ her.

Other books she finds that don’t quite make sense talk about _support bases_ , made of people who she trusts. Lizzie thinks that for however horrible her relative are, how she lives in a cupboard instead of a bedroom and how she spent countless nights curled up in the garden shed.

Lizzie thinks of her reserved, unkind aunt and uncle and Dudley’s aunt Marge, who used to be called Roger and wonders whether _support_ _base_ applies to them, too. Lizzie doesn’t love them, but they gave her dresses; Lizzie doesn’t trust them, but they let her change her name from Harry Potter to Elizabeth Evans.

 _The Dursley’s aren’t a support base,_ she thinks, reading the words _bear all or part of the weight of; hold up_ in a dictionary. _I dangle by a thread with the Dursley’s. I’m a puppet spelled alive, knowing they can tangle me up and break me whenever they like._

* * *

Magical theory doesn’t make sense to her, all together. They study it in each class – in charms, transfiguration, potions, defence and even herbology. Lizzie understands it all separately, but she just can’t see the connections.

Lizzie goes to Professor McGonagall, her first port of call, but her head of house isn’t the person to go to, apparently. _Professor Flitwick will be able to explain more, in depth – though perhaps one of your elder housemates would be able to help you. A prefect, maybe._

Professor Flitwick gives a long, understandable speech on magical charm theory. When Lizzie asks how that connects to something or other in transfiguration, how witches and wizards create magic, how they control it and use wands like they do, he hesitates.

_I’m afraid I haven’t studied this type of magical theory in some time, Miss Evans._

Lizzie knows then that her available teachers – that she likes, that have posted office-hours, that don’t hate her – can’t help her. She turns to the library for help and all she gets for her efforts is intelligible gibberish from a NEWT-level analysis comparing the hover charm to a propeller-feet transfiguration.

Wandering the castle is a habit she takes up. Hogwarts is a maze of the weird and wonderful. On the first floor there’s a room that has trees and stars inside; on the fifth floor there’s a broom closet with a faded mural of two witches transforming into wolves painted across the wall; behind a portrait of a deaf wizard in dungarees, shelves go from floor to ceiling, full of fluorescent yellow flowers that blow bubbles full of gas that makes Lizzie cough.

 _I need a teacher who can show me my place in this,_ she thinks one day that she wanders, pausing at a junction of corridors to imitate a moving tapestry of a man attempting to teach strange, giant creatures ballet. _I need a teacher to show me what magic is. I need a teacher._

A strange cricketing sound comes from behind her. Lizzie twirls around, bag swinging slightly. Her eyes widen as she sees a small door, newly-appeared and half-open. Creeping forwards, wand at the ready – not that she knows many spells, but Lizzie does know the theory for a stunning spell –

“ _Oh, what now is this?_ ” a strange voice comes from the door, before a small green being pops their head through. Lizzie stares at them and they stare at her. _It’s old, I think,_ Lizzie notes the white hair coming out of their long, pointed ears, sticking out from the side of their green, domed head.

“…hello?” she greets, before the being looks her up and down in a critical manner.

“Young, are you. Strong with the Force.”

“The Force?” Lizzie questions, before hazarding a guess at what they might mean. “You mean magic?”

“Magic, the Force, things that be one and the same,” the being says, before disappearing back through the door.

Lizzie lurches. “Wait!” she shouts, before following the being through the magic door.


	2. Chapter 2

Yoda is intelligible, once she arrives in Dagobah. The door – portal – to her world disappears, as does Yoda’s fluency in English and Lizzie is stuck in the swamp Yoda, the small green person, calls _home_. Communication is hard and the food isn’t suitable. But Lizzie has lived off less and even if it’s unappetising, it’s still _food_ and Yoda tries his best.

 _Aurebesh_ , Lizzie learns, is the language Yoda expects her to learn, if they wish to speak.

“Strange, your life is,” he says to her once she gains fluency, her eyebrows furrowing at his suddenly backwards grammar.

“Out of order,” she replies to him, a statement more than a question.

Yoda says a word that she learns the meaning of soon after – “Eccentric.”

Lizzie loses her wand to him well before she becomes fluent in his language. Even with the communication barrier, Yoda can teach her how magic works. He moves it around him, through him and through the world around him. He takes her hands, shows her what _he_ feels, so she can apply it to her own understanding of the world.

It’s during one of those sessions, that he takes her wand and throws it in the swamp. Later, he tells her it is an unnecessary tool and that the Force should not be manipulated in such a way. Lizzie learns that what she calls _magic_ is a primal part of the universe, a _Force_ , as he told her that first time they met in a corridor in Hogwarts.

A month passes, then two, then three. More and more time goes by. Lizzie struggles to keep track of the time and date, eventually giving up once Yoda tells her that Dagobah is not simply a different place, but a different _planet._ Lizzie knows enough about the turn of the Earth from astronomy and muggle science classes to know that her definition of _day_ won’t be the same as Dagobah’s.

Something in her _knows_ when her birthday passes, however, when she is twelve years old _._

“My padawan, you shall be,” Yoda calls her and that is when Lizzie finally learns of _Jedi._

* * *

Apathy is her problem, according to Yoda. She has not been taught to care for life and others – and that will be her ruin, if she ever touches the dark side. Yoda tells her that if she truly has a destiny on her home world, Lizzie must learn. Yoda cannot teach her how, though.

But Luke can.

Luke Skywalker becomes Yoda’s padawan, grimacing at the mush offered to him and questioning Lizzie’s ignorance about the known universe whenever they speak.

“A most powerful thing, friendship is,” Yoda intones. “With your heart, you must feel.”

“But what about the Force?” Lizzie frowns, “You said to trust the Force to tell me what to do.”

“Truth, both things are. Remiss, I was, in the past, to separate emotion from duty.” Yoda shakes his head, clawed feet curling up beneath him. “Fall to the dark side, might you, should you not become what your heart feels you truly are. To Fall is to lose oneself to hate, anger, loathing – of the latter, do you feel.”

Self-loathing. Lizzie’s skin crawls because it is not her skin and she hates herself for being born in this body, for being _male_ when she is female. _Yoda is right,_ she thinks, listening to his sermons like the Force is her new religion.

“You’re powerful,” she says to Luke when he practices lightsabre forms, kicking the rock she throws at him with his eyes closed. R2D2 swears at him in binary when it bounces off his dirty casing. Lizzie winces. “Sorry,” she says to the droid.

“Ignore him,” Luke advises her. “He’s got a poodoo mouth.”

“What’s _poodoo?_ ” Lizzie asks, though she can guess. From Luke’s chagrin expression, she can tell he didn’t mean to say that. From Yoda’s sigh, she can tell it’s _definitely_ a swear.

* * *

_She’s in a desert, the sand whipping around. It’s a storm – with Lizzie right in the middle. An old man stands beside her, unaffected by the riotous wind._

_“What is this?” she demands, shouting, arms rising around her face to protect her from the storm._

_The man smiles at her gently. “I can hear you, Elizabeth Potter. There’s no need to yell. The Force is all around you.”_

_“Sand is all around me!”_

_“Yes. The Force is all around you,” he says, teasing. Lizzie doesn’t understand, then she does. Slowly, she **reaches** and of course, the Force is there. They’re practically drowning in it. Lizzie focuses, concentrating._

_The storm stops raging._

_“Peace,” the man says, happy. “What do you wish from life, young Lizzie?”_

_“I- I don’t know,” Lizzie frowns. “I’m just a child. I don’t- I don’t even know what life **is**.”_

_“True,” he tilts his head back. His skin is wrinkled and weathered from the sun. “You are hidden from most, within the Force itself. I only find you now, because of Luke. You have calmed the storm around you.”_

_“I- I what?”_

_The old man kneels in front of her. “You are no longer hidden, Elizabeth Potter. I acted as an agent of the Force, following the Force’s will and guidance. It has brought you danger and I don’t know why. Only know this: the darkness can see you, now.”_

_Lizzie doesn’t reply. She knows, though – a shift in her being, like a clock striking twelve. **Thirteen** , her magic, the Force, tells her. It’s an unlucky number in numerous cultures around the world – throughout the galaxy, the Force tells her._

_It makes sense that her thirteenth birthday is an omen of change._


End file.
